Member Search

TopCoder Community Helps Research Led by Harvard Business School ProfessorGlobal Community of Computer Programmers to Contribute to Study on Distributed Innovation

GLASTONBURY, Conn., June 13, 2007 TopCoder®, Inc., the leader in online programming competition, skills assessment and competitive software development, today announced that its global community of members will help Professor Karim Lakhani of the Harvard Business School with his research agenda by providing access to their skills in innovative software development.

The TopCoder community will compete in a Wikipedia analysis challenge which will aid Professor Lakhani's research on distributed innovation systems and the movement of innovative activity to the edges of organizations and into communities (see http://courseware.hbs.edu/public/cases/wikipedia/ for more details on the project).

Lakhani is a professor at the Harvard Business School where he does research on distributed innovation systems and the movement of innovative activity to the edges of organizations and into communities. He has extensively studied the emergence of open source software communities and their unique innovation and product development strategies.

"TopCoder is excited to be assisting Prof. Lakhani in this research as we have long been proponents of the wisdom of our community and the concept of the collaborative meritocracy as the new model for global business," said Mike Lydon, CTO of TopCoder, Inc. "We are looking forward to contributing to this interesting and timely work."

About TopCoder, Inc.
TopCoder is the recognized leader in identifying, evaluating and mobilizing effective software development resources. Through its proprietary programming competitions and rating system, TopCoder recognizes and promotes the abilities of the best programmers around the world. TopCoder software harnesses the talent of these developers to design, develop and deploy software through its revolutionary competitive development methodology.